Center Moriches wins back-and-forth LI Class B girls volleyball final over Oyster Bay
Cailey White’s 24 kills led Center Moriches, which also got 21 from Megan Franke. Julia Hromada had 44 assists on Friday, Nov. 10, 2023. Credit: Dawn McCormick
Center Moriches dominated the opening set, then found themselves with no room for error.
A fifth set decided the Long Island Class B girls volleyball championship/Southeast Regional final between Center Moriches and Oyster Bay at SUNY-Old Westbury on Friday.
Center Moriches took the first set 25-7 before dropping the next two to the Nassau champions.
But the Red Devils, led by Cailey White’s 24 kills, claimed the final two sets and became Long Island champions in a 25-7, 23-25, 20-25, 25-14, 15-9 victory.
"We realized at the end of that third set we needed to pull through,” White said. “We came together, we knew we wanted it, we worked so hard since preseason for this and we just knew this was our game.”
Megan Franke had 21 kills, Izzy Rayburn had 11 kills and Julia Hromada added 44 assists for the Red Devils (17-2).
Nicole Gatti recorded 23 kills for Oyster Bay (17-2), including 17 in the second and third sets. Sophia Pavlovich had 16 assists for the Baymen and setup Gatti’s powerful right hand in the Oyster Bay comeback.
The Red Devils turned to their top two hitters to regain the lead.
“We just assumed we would win the next two, and we didn’t work for it the way we knew we had to,” Franke said of Center Moriches’ lapse after the first set. “We’re usually all over the court, but that wasn’t working for us in those two sets. So, we had to figure out a new way to get the points down, get the kills, and that was to feed Cailey and me.”
And as Center Moriches found their setter, Hromada fed White and Franke. The two Center Moriches seniors combined for 15 kills in the final two sets.
“When I need to feed someone, they’re always there, they’re always calling for the ball,” Hromada said. “We all came together as a team.”
That’s what the chatter in the huddle before the final set focused on. After an up-and-down match through four sets, Center Moriches had to win the fifth.
“In the huddle, we said we had to come out pushing, we can’t sit back and relax, we have to play to win,” Franke said.
Oyster Bay led briefly at the start of the final set before White struck the winning kill and put the game away.
“We all put our differences aside, and we came together,” White said. “We really put our heads to it, and we wanted to win.”
